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Keeping Up With My Own Evolution: Silence

Deep Thoughts and Musings, Keeping Up With My Own Evolution, , , , , , ,

Checking out the new fall TV shows is always fun.  This year, fall 2016, The Good Place is one of the comedies I’m recording. It’s about what life’s like after we die.  How does someone get to go to the good place when the life they lived on earth qualifies them to go to the bad place?  Well…..the myriad of funny situations around this premise make for a lot of fun.  I’m always up for a conversation about good and evil and so I’m enjoying watching and listening to these characters try to sort out their feelings and thoughts on the subject.

I’m especially enjoying the character Jianyu.  He somehow arrived in the good place a drug dealer/dj but was mistaken for a buddhist monk who had taken a vow of silence.  He didn’t correct that assumption by just keeping his mouth shut.  Everyone around him gave him the benefit of the doubt as each new situation arose…..surely, of anyone there, he would take the highest road, think the best thoughts and BE the goodest. With each new situation, he just stood there mute and the others around him voiced the pure, positive expression they expected from him.

I decided this would be an interesting thing for me to try.  I’m so quick to voice my opinions.  Could I keep my mouth shut long enough for those around me to fill in the silence? And if I could, what would they assume I would say?…..ooh…..I shudder to think about it…..but, what an interesting thing to do.

Allowing myself to be silent is presenting me with lots of gifts.  Surprise!  Surprise!  One big one is giving me time to be aware of others emotions rather than their words.  When I’m not thinking about what I’m going to say, I seem to pay more attention to their facial expressions and body language;  I gather more information and low and behold that information is sometimes completely different from what I think I hear in their words.

Another gift I’m realizing gradually is that I feel no pressure to respond…..and in most cases, as others see that I’m not responding, they jump right back in and continue their own conversation.  I can sit back and enjoy myself.  I no longer try to offer sage advice or solutions. The pressure is off!  I like this. This is fun.

As to evolution…..perhaps by listening more and talking less, I can just relax and enjoy others and their differences of opinion. Relaxing and enjoying both sound great…..sort of like being on vacation!

Red Sprite

Beauty of Nature, Watercolor Paintings, , , , , , , , ,

Lightning is such a fascinating phenomenon.  I live on a mountainside where, as storms approach, I can watch them come across the valley to the west bringing their towering clouds and lightning with them.  The bolts are often bright, jagged and searing…..very dramatic as they light up the clouds above them and attack the ground below.

At the same time that we are able to see lighting below clouds during a storm,  there are sometimes massive, but weak, luminous flashes above the clouds.  They are described as large scale electrical discharges high above cumulonimbus, normally reddish-orange or greenish-blue with hanging tendrils below and arching branches above.

The first photos of sprites were obtained by accident in 1989. Since then, thousands of photos have been taken from the space shuttle and aircraft.   Early research referred to them as “upward lightning” or “cloud-to-ionosphere discharges”.  Now because of their whimsical, fleeting nature, they are simply called sprites.  I think it’s so much fun that “scientists” would give what sounds so serious, a Transient Luminous Event or TLE, a wonderful, full of personality and life name.  I imagine them dancing around above storms sometimes singly and sometimes in groups like nymphs in the moonlight.

There are some subjects and ideas that just grab a hold of me and I want to know as much about them as I can.  I love living in the day of the computer.  So much is being discovered and shared…..it’s so exciting!  I kept thinking about these red sprites and decided to bring them to life with my paint and brush first with small studies and then a large painting.

When I imagine our world, our universe, I imagine life…..life from the smallest particle to the largest expanse…..life that composes the air we breathe, life that forms our sun and stars and the life responsible for and embodied in the red sprites that dance above our storms.

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Cropped photo of Red Sprite 34″x51″.

Fairytale Wedding

Beauty of Nature, Deep Thoughts and Musings, Travels, , , , , , , ,

I’ve listened to many couples talk about just what they envision for their wedding experience.  Those dreams are as varied as the individuals involved.  But when I began to hear about the plans for this wedding from the Mother of the Groom, it was obvious to me  that this couple had made a conscious choice to listen to their hearts and their hearts dictated fun, travel and magic.

I believe looking for fun is the natural God-given state-of-being we are born into as enfants.  It’s probably the most important state to which we could aspire.  But it often appears to some as a state of selfishness or childishness…..to which I say…..Hey!  Hey!  (to get your attention)  We all want happiness.  No one can give it to you.  You have to take it…..that’s what looking for fun is all about.  And, once you have it, it spreads to everyone lucky enough to be around you.

I believe travelling is so exciting because it takes us out of our comfortable routines.  Just seeing new places and people and adjusting to new experiences opens our eyes a little wider to the beauty that surrounds us, sharpens our ears to take in new sounds, expands our ability to love and be loved and increases our zest for life.

I believe in magic!  I see it everyday!  I experienced magic in a concentrated dose over several days spending time with the family and friends of two talented, genius visionaries as they pledged their love and began their lives together.

Jekyll Island 2015 035

The spanish moss hanging from the huge oak trees created the perfect backdrop for the ceremony.  The late afternoon sunlight added the perfect, soft, magical atmosphere.  The Jekyll Island Club Hotel provided it all.  Everyone there was bathed in gold and we basked in every delicious moment.

That’s how it was in Georgia…..a fun, extraordinary, magical experience.   I love knowing that it wasn’t an accident.  They planned it that way.   I’m sending out my love and appreciation to everyone involved and especially to the newlyweds!

 

Everything Is A Miracle

Deep Thoughts and Musings, , , , , , ,

Albert Einstein is said to have said:  “There are two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Lately, I’ve been playing a game with myself.  I look for miracles in everything I do and in everything that happens around me.  The fun thing, the exciting thing that happens, is that I find them.  I find them in the synchronicity and serendipity of the smallest things.

Last January, I wrote a blog about it, I witnessed a miracle.  Hundreds of starlings staged a spectacular performance in my backyard.  It was a sweeping panoramic production.  From the time it began, or that I became aware of it, only minutes passed and it was over.  We were left there with our mouths open, mute, in wonder.  What just happened?  I’m convinced that things like this are happening all around us.  We are just not aware of them.

One evening, recently, my husband and I had a busy afternoon and evening and as everything wrapped up he commented “this would be a good time to go to Nielson’s” and disappeared into his office.  About 9:30 p.m., I peeked in and asked “were you serious?”  “Not really, but, yes!”  30 minutes later we were out the door.  Nielson’s closes at 10:30 p.m.  We talked about going through the drive-thru or sitting out on their patio, going inside or ordering at their walk-up window.

As we ordered, a friend from Oregon recognized us.  He had ordered inside but Nielson’s doesn’t take credit cards, so was on his way to a ATM.  What are the odds?  He had been introduced to Nielson’s on his LDS mission in his twenties.  Being in Salt Lake on business, he couldn’t resist driving up to Bountiful (Nielson’s Concrete is afterall a local institution) for ice cream.  He almost aborted the trip on the freeway…..it’s late, it’s a long drive for an ice cream, etc.  But, there he was and there we were at the same place and the same time.  We marvelled at the circumstances that had brought us there together.  We sat and ate ice cream/concrete and talked long after Nielson’s closed.

images

Not really a miracle, more of a coincidence…..you say?  We run into old friends in odd places all of the time.  I used to believe in coincidences.  But not anymore.  Now I believe that everything is a miracle.  And…..I see more of them everyday.  It’s FUN!